Making Homeopathic Remedies

Years ago, I made and sold homeopathic remedies.

I know they are useless, but that's what appealed to me about them as a business. They were very cheap and easy to make, and there was zero risk of harming anyone with them.

According to "Hahnemann's Theory of Like Cures Like", homeopathic remedies work by introducing minute amounts of a substance that induces the symptoms you want to cure, thus triggering your immune system to cure yourself "naturally".

And of course, the smaller the dose, the better it works!

Yes! Fewer ingredients to buy!

For example a 30x (thirty times diluted) remedy works better than a 10x (or ten times diluted) remedy. The secret in homeopathy is that you only need "minute amounts" to trigger and keep your immune system on high alert for a problem, and to fight that problem off!

For example, if you have watery eyes and a runny nose, you would want to take small amounts of something that would cause you to have watery eyes and a runny nose to trigger your immune system cure yourself of the watery eyes and runny nose problem.

You probably have something in your kitchen right now that can cause watery eyes and a runny nose. What do you think that could be?

Spoiler alert-

If you change the name of an onion to Allium Cepa, chop up a tiny bit of that onion and mix that with water, then dilute the water a lot, you will have a homeopathic remedy for your watery eyes and runny nose.

And remember, the more you dilute this remedy the better it will work!

Sweet!

Well, my Wile E Coyote Super Genius thinking was that since the tap water from my faucet has been rolling around the world for millions of years, that tap water came "pre-loaded" to cure all diseases known to mankind!

More better!

But my SO, who apparantly had better ethics than I had about the topic at the time, said "Nope. If you are going to make and sell homeopathic remedies, you have to at least actually make homeopathic remedies, and not just sell tap water."

Drat.

Stupid ethics.

So, I set about accumulating all the junk I needed to make and sell homeopathic remedies. My biggest expense was the printer I used to make labels, followed by a bunch of little bottles with dropper tops. I even bought some shrink tubing to provide that tamper proof seal one finds on all sorts of products. I used a hair dryer to shrink the tubing onto the finished product.

Then I had another Wile E Coyote Super Genius moment! I decided to see if I could register my homeopathic remedies with the FDA so I could advertise them as "FDA Approved".

Turns out you can!

I though that having FDA approval for my products would give me an edge over those inferior, not FDA approved, homepathic products.

Registering my homeopathic remedies with the FDA was free and easy-peasy. I read the rules and filled out the paperwork.

A nice gentleman from the FDA came to inspect my facility which was my kitchen counter, my various ingredients, and the bottle of vodka I used as a preservative (but did not drink because it was a "business" item!

Ethics, people!

You just have to be very careful about what you claim your product can do. I used a lot of "weasel words" in my claims: "assists with", "for", "aids", etc. And it helps if you sell remedies for problems that aren't medical (like "colds" or "flu"), but are more vague (like "fear" or "stress").

So I registered all my different products and sold them on EBay. I was such a good homeopathic remedy manufacturing company that I could make custom blends for special cases and also offered alcohol free remedies for those who abstain for whatever reason (you just have to keep those remedies refrigerated).

I bought some padded envelopes, figured out the cost of mailing (free shipping was included in the price but US only), and when an order came in, I'd mix it up right quick while making the kiddos breakfasts, drop the remedy in the envelope, and leave the package in the mailbox for the mailman to pick up as we headed out the door to school.

I tried different price points on Ebay and found that the more expensive product seemed to sell a little better. I mean, it's more expensive so it must be better stuff, right?

Anyway, I never made a ton of money selling my homeopathic remedies but it helped when the kids were small and while I stayed home with them for a few years. When I went back to work, I didn't feel like bothering with this project anymore and let it go.

But I sure did learn alot.

The biggest issue for me (well, besides the ethics of it) was just the math: how much onion to how much water, and to also account for the 10% vodka I needed to use as the preservative in the finished product.

A while back, I gave what research and records I had left over from this project to an investigative researcher at a news station who was working on a related story. Unfortunately, all this stuff was lost when his office was flooded by a hurricane.